


It's a Long Road, From Which There is No Return

by Merixcil



Series: Advent Fics 2019 [2]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Breaking and Entering, Established Relationship, Fugitives, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:29:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26375770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merixcil/pseuds/Merixcil
Summary: Their first Christmas on the run is more civilised than Will was expecting
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Series: Advent Fics 2019 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1916806
Kudos: 5





	It's a Long Road, From Which There is No Return

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt taken from: [He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother by The Justice Collective](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h8loYnNlZA)  
> 

The house is cold and empty, as it has been for the past two days. Floorboards creak underfoot and though he’s getting better at this, both the sneaking and the coping with what happens when you don’t quite get it right, Will’s hackles rise to attention as the wood dips under his weight and he glances over his shoulder half expecting to see the family waiting for him, ready and armed. 

It’s big, that much he can say for this place, though he picked it out because the kitchen looked like it might be a step or two above the campfires and electric cookers they’ve been making do with over the past three months. This is a horrible time of year to be on the run, even if they are heading south. He wishes Hannibal would have thought better of it before he decided to let the Red Dragon out into the open so late in the year. 

Up ahead, Hannibal floats noiselessly from room to room, occasionally gracing Will with a fond smirk that suggests simultaneously that Will has outdone himself, that such a thing would have been totally unthinkable before today, and that the best Will can manage on this front is still a far sight from what Hannibal was really hoping for. Well bully for him, but three hundred year old European mansions with larders the size of a garage aren’t exactly easy to come by in middle America. 

Will arrives at the living room first, so deep within the house that he never managed to make it this far on his recon missions. The furniture is plush and neatly arranged, everything put away before the family left for Christmas, ready for them to come back and explode back into the space. There’s a pine tree decorated in perfectly mismatched red and gold ornaments in the far corner, the lights switched out. A handful of presents remain underneath it, to be dished out as soon as their rightful owners find the time to stop by. 

“I’m going to get a fire going.” Will calls, voice loud in case Hannibal has found himself down the far end of the house already, but of course he appears almost as soon as he is called, like he had been waiting for an excuse to make an entrance just the other side of the door. 

“I was rather hoping we would wait till after Christmas to commit arson, but I’m sure we can rearrange our schedule if necessary.”

“No!” Will sighs, exasperated, and points towards the large open hearth on the far wall. “It’s freezing in here, and they have a big garden, we can probably replace most of the wood we use.” He realises, as soon as he’s finished talking, that Hannibal’s eyes are twinkling in the half dark with the glee of a joke well told.

His sense of humour leaves a lot to be desired. Will rolls his eyes and fumbles around on the mantelpiece till he finds the matches so carefully kept out of reach of children almost certainly old enough to find them if they really wanted. He skips over the newspapers stacked up next to the wood basket and goes straight for the kindling wood, shedding a few flakes to take the first flames and then carefully stacking thicker pieces on top until the heart is burning bright enough to handle the weight of the first log. 

There’s a fine balance they’re trying to strike. The game is no fun if they leave no traces of themselves behind, and much as there’s the odd night they’ve had to spend sleeping rough, they don’t want to live like fugitives. Will has been scouting this house for the past week specifically because of the chimney he saw belching smoke the first day he saw it, a fully functional fireplace being an invaluable tool in their journey. It saves them having to drain the gas metre to keep themselves warm, so that the only damning evidence of what they’ve done will be the little blip on their bills where Hannibal will make the most of their kitchen on Christmas Day. 

Will had imagined that things like holidays would have been the first to go. Lord knows he hasn’t celebrated Hanukkah in years, but Hannibal has a soft spot for high days and holidays. They had made the most of Thanksgiving with a Ukranian Family a couple of hundred miles back, and now here they are, settling in to have their own version of Christmas. 

Will sits back, dropping onto the sofa, which determinedly faces the fire and not the TV. He looks over and sees that Hannibal has turned on the lights on the Christmas tree, which are now winking at him in their tasteful gold splendour. 

“Turn them off!” Will hisses. 

Hannibal shrugs and does nothing of the sort, reaching instead for one of the presents under the tree, holding it up to his ear and shaking it as if doing so might reveal all it’s secrets. 

Knowing Hannibal, he can probably tell everything about someone’s Christmas presents from glance alone. He passes the package to Will, like he means for him to open it. 

Will snorts. “Pretty sure the presents are supposed to wait till Christmas Day.”

“When I was a child.” Hannibal starts, leaping over the back of the sofa and dropping down next to Will. “We would open our presents on Christmas Eve. That’s how it’s done in most of Europe, you know.”

“You don’t say.”

“I do indeed. Come now, Will. Open your present.”

They could spend half an hour arguing over the ethics of unwrapping someone else’s gift, or Will could just cut to the chase open the damn thing. He knows more than well enough how this goes. He slides his hands carefully over the paper, trying and failing to remove it without tearing it at all, in the vain hope that he might be able to re-wrap it and put it back under the tree once this is done. 

“A remote control car.” Will looks down at the red and white box, advertising a product that sounds suspiciously advanced for how light it sits in his lap. 

“And a good one at that. The company that makes it is British.”

“What, the Brits can’t make bad toys?”

“I’m sure they can, but I’ve never had the misfortune of stumbling onto one of their more inferior products.”

“Figures that you would be an Anglophile on top of everything else.”

Hannibal’s head quirks ever so slightly. “And that would be the worst of my crimes?”

“Far and away.” Will can’t avoid the smile creeping in around the edges of his mouth. The constant vigilance is exhausting, and in the light of the fire and the Christmas Tree it seems more hassle that it’s worth to pretend that he doesn’t want to enjoy himself for as long as they’re here. 

Someone might notice the lights, so they’ll have to stick to the back rooms of the house as far as possible. Someone might notice the car but it’s parked a quarter of a mile away so it’s unlikely that they’ll make the connection before he and Hannibal sniff them out. 

Well, before Hannibal sniffs them out. Will’s still learning, still getting there. But with no route back to his old life he’s free to enjoy the journey, to press onward.

His next test: how to get the carcass they have in the trunk over to the house without anyone spotting them. That’s his mission for tonight, his little Christmas present to Hannibal. On top of the house and the kitchen. 

“It’s a good kitchen.” Hannibal agrees, sneaking out an arm to pull Will closer, breathing into his hair. He’s lying, probably. It’s most likely a perfectly adequate kitchen in his estimation, and the envy of all the neighbourhood in anyone else’s. “Thank you.”

“Yeah, well. Thank you for my toy car.”

“You best treasure it, Will.”

“I will.” Will tells him, and even though Hannibal is still joking, he thinks he might mean it. Their first Christmas together, his first Christmas away from anywhere he might call home. Everything changing, he can only hope for the better.

They sit together, huddled on the sofa till the heat from the fire starts to circulate, thawing them out. The constant cold becomes a background concern after a while, right up until they’re forced to reckon with real creature comforts, when it seems to hit them full force. Hannibal would like to pretend he’s immune to it, like all he’s good for is carrying people bridal style through the snow, but Will’s learning to see the tension in his shoulders when the wind rises, how the hairs on his arms never rise to goosebumps but the ones on the back of his neck do. It would be a problem, if he weren’t so devastatingly handsome in winter wear. 

“I had been hoping to spend Christmas with you for some time.” Hannibal mutters, quiet enough that if anyone else were in the room, Will would be the only person able to hear him. 

For one spine chilling second, Will thinks about divorce and the wife he doesn’t have anymore and the child that never wanted to be his. All that he had, except it was never really his. He was just passing through, on the way to better things. 

“Me too.” Will agrees. He stares into the fire and lets his mind go blank. 

**Author's Note:**

> This work was originally posted as part of a multi chaptered 'advent fics' fic that I'm trying to split up. If you think you've read it before, you probably have
> 
> Comments on the previous posting of this fic (just ask if you want me to remove yours) include:
> 
> >DaringD: I love this Hannigram fic with a different take on their escape after the Fall! And I'd read ALL of these if they were Hannigram! ;-)  
> >>Merixcil: Alas, I was going for variety this time round. I'm very pleased you enjoyed this though


End file.
